Short Practicum Reflection

Killarney Secondary School is my practicum school. It is said to be the biggest school in Vancouver with approximately 2000 students of various backgrounds. The school has very supportive administrative and staffs. It is a great school for me to develop professionally. I definitely have a great two short weeks experience and I am looking forward to go back there for my long practicum. During my two weeks there, I have been observing different classes. Every class has its own unique culture and every teacher has his/her own style.
Some of my most memorable experiences:
- I have been in a tutorial/help class for junior students who need extra support with school work. In one class, I have tried to help this girl with her Math homework (adding/subtracting positive and negative numbers). But the girl wouldn’t have me teaching her. Instead, she was being difficult and kept saying her teacher taught it a better way and what she’s doing was right (which wasn’t). The teacher responsible there then talked to her and asked her to work on other subjects since she didn’t like any of our methods.
- I have been in this Social Studies 11 class. The teacher has an interactive activity for the class on the topic of capitalism. She put big poster papers each with a question relating to the topic around in the classroom on the desks. Students sitting in the group then had 3 minutes to answer each question and kept rotating to the next question. The teacher then would walk around and even join the small group discussion. At the end of the class, the teacher then posed an open question for everyone to answer in a 5 minutes quick write. I think I can use this format as an unit test review for my class.